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Germany's Federal Employment Agency says the job market continues to show signs of weakness. Tens of thousands more have been without a job recently but overall figures for 2012 were strong.

Joblessness in Germany rose for a ninth consecutive month in December, the Federal Employment Agency (BA) reported on Thursday. It said 88,000 people more were out of work in the last month of 2012, compared to levels reached in November.

The agency said in a year-on-year comparison, there was an increase of 60,000 unemployed people in the country in December, bringing the total to 2.84 million.

A gunman in a small Swiss village has shot and killed three women and wounded two men. At a 2011 referendum, Swiss voters rejected tighter gun laws in the country.

A man shot and killed three women and wounded two men late Wednesday in Daillon, Switzerland. The 33-year-old former psychiatric patient fired from his apartment and later came out into the street, firing more than 20 shots, officials said.

The gunman was a local unemployed resident living on welfare, police said. He used at least two firearms, including an old Swiss army carbine and a rifle capable of firing lead shot. The gunman's weapons were on record as having been seized and destroyed in 2005, and he was not currently listed as having any guns.

After a gunman killed three people in a village in southern Switzerland, experts examine how, although gun ownership is almost as widespread as in the United States, shooting sprees in the neutral Alpine nation are rare.

Gun ownership and recreational shooting are widespread in Switzerland. According to estimates - there are no official figures - at least one in every three of its less than eight million inhabitants holds a gun. In fact, after the US and Yemen, Switzerland ranks third on the list of most guns per person.

Willy Pfund, president of the Swiss weapons lobby ProTell, defended the high proportion of weapons in the small, heavily armed nation. "One must be prepared," he said. If enemies were to invade Switzerland, he explained, people would have to own weapons and know how to use them in order to defend themselves.

exemplifies the right to bear arms inscribed in the US constitution. An armed citizenry can never be oppressed, etc.

If the right to bear arms in the US were accompanied by the same restrictions and safeguards as in Switzerland -- notably, two weeks' annual military service for all able-bodied males -- that would be pretty much what the authors of the amendment intended, at a guess.

It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue
- Queen Elizabeth II

Yet we've also always had gun control. The Founding Fathers instituted gun laws so intrusive that, were they running for office today, the NRA would not endorse them. While they did not care to completely disarm the citizenry, the founding generation denied gun ownership to many people: not only slaves and free blacks, but law-abiding white men who refused to swear loyalty to the Revolution.

For those men who were allowed to own guns, the Founders had their own version of the "individual mandate" that has proved so controversial in President Obama's health-care-reform law: they required the purchase of guns. A 1792 federal law mandated every eligible man to purchase a military-style gun and ammunition for his service in the citizen militia. Such men had to report for frequent musters--where their guns would be inspected and, yes, registered on public rolls.

I am surprised that weapons are that widespread here, because you rarely see people with weapons here, unless they are in the militia uniform coming or going to the training or police.. What seems relatively strict according to the wiki is the access to ammunition. Also not mentioned in the wiki I seem to remember that the the men at the end of their militia duty have to return the rifle.

Do pharmaceutical companies pay doctors to prescribe certain drugs and take part in medical trials? Germany's medical corruption debate is heating up.

Germany's state-backed insurers are demanding prison sentences of up to three years for doctors who accept bribes or other gratuities. It may seem surprising, but in fact at the moment independent doctors who run their own practices can't be penalized, according to a ruling by the Federal Court of Justice in June 2012. The judges sent a message to lawmakers, saying that this loophole had to be closed soon.

Prior to the ruling, prosecutors had spent years investigating doctors and employees of the German pharmaceutical company ratiopharm. Doctors were allegedly paid to prescribe the company's drugs.

If we had that sort of rule here, the captive physicians who enable the medical marijuana industry would be in serious trouble... A new one just open up the street from me: "Doctor's Orders" is its name.

It's worth reading the insightful discussions of physiological outcomes of various medical ailments in this review. :-)

Istanbul - Refugees and asylum seekers from Afghanistan in Turkey are caught in a legal limbo, pushing some into the arms of smugglers.

Turkey does not give refugee status to anybody from Afghanistan or outside Europe.

The situation arose as far back as 1951, when it opted for a "geographical limitation" in its adoption of a UN refugee convention, which reserves the status only for "persons who have become refugees as a result of events occurring in Europe."

BRUSSELS - There has been a great deal of flurry in recent days over the resignation of Italy's unelected technocrat Prime Minister Mario Monti, the consequent snap elections scheduled for February that have spooked markets, and Italy's "return to a fully democratic government".

BRUSSELS - Russia's acquittal of the only man charged over the death of Sergei Magnitsky will harm its international reputation, the EU has said.

Magnitsky, an accountant who in 2007 exposed the fact that Russian officials and the mafia were stealing hundreds of millions of euros of tax money, later died in jail after being refused medical treatment for pancreatitis and after being beaten by his guards.

His case became a cause celebre when the US last year passed a law in his name that will see up to 60 Russian officials banned from getting American visas.

t's "cash only" now for tourists at the Vatican wanting to pay for museum tickets, souvenirs and other services after Italy's central bank decided to block electronic payments, including credit cards, at the tiny city-state.

Deutsche Bank Italia, which for some 15 years had provided the Vatican with electronic payment services, said Thursday that the Bank of Italy had pulled its authorization after Dec. 31.

The Corriere della Sera newspaper reported that the Italian central bank took the action because the Holy See has not yet fully complied with European Union safeguards against money laundering. That means Italian banks are not authorized to operate within the Vatican, which is in the process of improving its mechanisms to combat laundering.

Credit continued to contract in November, with continued weak growth in money supply; the latest economic data show that the eurozone economy remains firmly in recession; Mario Monti has shelved his style of understatement, and went on the attack on Berlusconi, calling him volatile in his private and public lives; he also criticises the extremism of the economics spokesmen of both large parties; Domenico Ferrara says Monti has always been a politician, not a technocrat; the executive director of RAI accuses Monti of abusing his powers to seek an excessive media presence; Italians will have to pay 15 new taxes in 2013; Francois Hollande and Jean-Mark Ayrault demonstrate a united front, hoping to quell rumours about a deteriorating relationship between the two; Ayrault sets out an action plan of 15 new laws, with vague promises on fiscal and labour reform; after the negative constitutional vote ruling, Pierre Moscovici says the 75% tax will come anyways, as he will now rework the bill to comply with the verdict; Vladimir Putin has given Gerard Depardieu Russian citizenship so that he can avoid French taxes; the Portuguese media say that the 2013 budget may come in effect after all, since the President's referral to the Constitutional Court includes no time frame; Germany plans more austerity in 2014 to meet the target of a structurally balanced budget; the Greek 2012 budget deficit is likely to come in better than forecast; Ireland, too, will beat forecasts of its 2012 deficit; there has been a small rise - albeit from a low level - in Spanish savings deposits after the removal of a penalty on high interest accounts; Morgan Stanley puts Spain near the top of its investment recommendations due to the expected effects of the OMT; half of Spanish regions will miss their deficit targets - while the regions as a whole will meet it; Jorg Bibow, meanwhile, says the institutional response to the eurozone crisis is based on a fundamental misdiagnosis.

In an interview with Les Echos, Pierre Moscovisci confirmed that the 75% tax for the wealthy will come and that the government will rework the bill to ensure that next time it will pass the constitutional council. The government's initial plan to levy a 75% tax, which was aimed at all individuals earning more than 1m a year (only income above that benchmark would be taxed at 75%) was rejected by France's constitutional council. Late in December the Council ruled that the 75% super-tax was unfair because it flouted the law in France that taxes are decided by household, not by individual.

Russia welcomes Depardieu

Gerard Depardieu, who bought a house in Belgium in protest against a proposed 75% tax rate and vowed to give up his French passport out of rage against the prime minister's dismissive comments on his move, was granted Russian citizenship from Vladimir Putin yesterday, France 24 reports. Depardieu had told friends he was considering three options to escape France's new tax regime: settling in Belgium, relocating to Montenegro, where he has a business, or moving to Russia. The Belgians said Depardieu will have to choose between Russian or Belgian citizenship, can't have both, Le Soir reports.

Why stop at Russia or Montenegro? I'm sure Kosovo or the dodgier parts of Bosnia would be happy to host Depardieu's gated community.

US President Barack Obama has signed a bill into law that allows the country to avoid a "fiscal cliff." The move came just days after both houses of Congress approved the legislation.

The president is reported to have signed the bill late on Wednesday, while on vacation in Hawaii.

"We received the bill late this afternoon, and it was immediately processed. A copy was delivered to the president for review. He then directed the bill be signed by autopen," a White House official said.

In the wake of bruising fights in their own ranks over the "fiscal cliff" and aid for victims of superstorm Sandy, Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives open a new Congress on Thursday more divided than ever.

While their leader, Speaker John Boehner, seems in no danger of losing his position because of the divisions, his ability to speak for his membership in the House appears greatly diminished.

That could not come at a worse time for Republicans as they prepare for their next attempt to get more spending cuts out of President Barack Obama. They will try to use the debt ceiling -- and Obama's request to raise it -- as leverage, as they did in 2011.

But if the final days of this Congress were indicative of things to come, Republicans will have a rough time effectively using their majority in the House against Obama, who even Republicans acknowledge is at the top of his game following the Democrat's re-election in November.

A prominent economist tells Press TV that the United States so-called fiscal cliff is more like a 'bottomless pit of debt' that the country is diving into. He also added that the United States risks collapsing of dollar in 2013. US President Barack Obama has signed into law a bill backed by the Senate that averted the so-called fiscal cliff, the White House says. Obama signed the 'American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012' on Wednesday, the White House said in a statement. On January 1, the House of Representatives voted 257 to 167, approving the bill, which consists of raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans, while exempting others who earn less than $450,000 a year. It will also put off 109 billion dollars in budget cuts for two months.

To further discuss the issue, Press TV's News Analysis program has conducted an interview with Max Keiser, a journalist and broadcaster in London, Eric Draitser, founder of stopimperialism.com in New York, and Rollin Amore who is an economist and political commentator in Washington.

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

When you have such long delays on the comms links, it would make sense to encourage your interviewees to say more than mere soundbites. That was even more frustrating than watching a pointlessly live TV interview on BBCNews.

Record it in advance folks and edit the gaps out. Live TV is just a fetish when you're pushing opinion

Natural disasters have again caused huge economic damage over the past 12 months. According to calculations by Germany's Munich Re, some two thirds of the overall damage was logged in the United States.

According to a study published by the world's largest reinsurer, Munich Re of Germany, natural disasters caused a total of 122 billion euros ($160 billion) in economic damage in 2012.

It said insured damage amounted to $65 billion last year. Munich Re noted that two thirds of overall damages from natural disasters and some 90 percent of insured damage were logged in the US, but failed to say how much the Munich-based company had to cover itself.

BRUSSELS - Portugal's President has called into question the viability of his country's austerity programme.

Cavaco Silva said in his New Year's speech this week that he would request an inquiry from the country's top court on whether planned spending cuts as well as a new supertax on pensions above 1,350 a month were constitutional.

He said his country would "honour its international obligations," even though a negative court ruling could force the government to rewrite its 2013 budget.

After months of stalemate, a resolution to the crisis gripping the two Sudans could be in sight.

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir will meet with his South Sudanese counterpart, Salva Kiir, in Ethiopia on Friday, January 4, at the urging of the African Union. The two countries, which signed a peace deal in 2005 after a long civil war, are expected to discuss the possibility of establishing a demilitarised buffer zone along the disputed border separating them.

The resumption of oil flows will also be one of the most pressing issues on the table.

Prosecutors in New Delhi have formally charged five men accused of raping a 23-year-old woman who later died from severe head trauma and organ damage. The case sparked outrage across India.

The charges filed against the men on Thursday to the district court included murder and presented a reportedly 1,000-page dossier of evidence. If the court finds the assailants guilty in the fast-tracked case, they could face the death penalty. The country's chief justice called for resolve to let justice prevail in a highly emotional situation.

"Let us not get carried away. A swift trial should not be at the cost of a fair trial," Chief Justice Altamas Kabir told the local media on Thursday.

Protesters furious at the impunity enjoyed by sex offenders in India were given a first indication that attitudes may be starting to change on Thursday when police in the north-eastern state of Assam arrested a prominent local politician who had been set upon by a group of women accusing him of rape.

According to a local police official quoted by AP news agency, the politician was captured by villagers early on Thursday after he allegedly entered a woman's home and raped her.

Nineteen worshippers have died and another 47 were injured in a car bombing in Iraq. The death toll may rise as some of the wounded were seriously hurt.

Shiites returning from Iraq's shrine city of Karbala for the final commemorations of a revered figure in Shiite Islam were targeted on Thursday when a car bomb killed 19 worshippers in a parking lot in the town of Musayyib, which was used mainly by vehicles transporting pilgrims.

Among the victims were five women and four children. A medic on the scene said the death toll could well rise, owing to the injuries of the 47 wounded in the attack.

A US drone attack has reportedly killed a key commander of Taliban Islamist militants in northwestern Pakistan. He is said to have been among several militants killed in the strike.

Pakistani officials told news agencies on Thursday that Mullah Nazir Wazir had been killed in a US drone attack that struck a house in the village of Angoor Adda, near Wana, the capital of South Waziristan.

"Mullah Nazir and five associates died on the spot," an unnamed official told the AFP news agency.

President Cristina Fernandez has published an open letter calling on Britain to enter talks on the fate of the disputed Falklands Islands. The British Foreign Office said this was a decision for the islanders themselves.

Cristina Fernandez's letter coincided with the 180th anniversary of the Falklands Islands reverting to their current stint under British control in 1833, in what the Argentine president called "a blatant exercise of 19th-Century colonialism."

The letter makes no specific requests or demands on the islands, known as the Malvinas in Argentina, save for the closing sentence, which appears to refer to prior mentions of a 1965 General Assembly resolution urging bilateral talks on the matter between Britain and Argentina.

Whether Assad chooses "hell" or a democratic transition for his country, Syria's fate will likely be decided in 2013. Rebels smell victory. Yet opposition forces should be working now to avoid a second hell therafter.

At an Arab League meeting in Cairo this past Sunday (31.12.2012), Lakhdar Brahimi - the UN envoy to Syria - warned that 2013 could see the deaths of more 100,000 Syrians if no measures are taken to stop the Syrian civil war. As he spoke, rebels in the northwestern city of Aleppo were preparing lay siege to the local airport.

The pan-Arab news giant Al-Jazeera bought Current TV, a struggling US cable channel, Wednesday in a deal aimed at giving the Qatar-based broadcaster the scope to challenge major American TV networks.

Current, co-founded by former US vice president Al Gore, announced the sale in a statement that was later confirmed by Al-Jazeera. The acquisition will allow the latter to reach millions more US homes than it does at present.

The financial terms of the deal were not immediately disclosed, but Forbes reported that a possible value of $400 million could net Gore $100 million.

The purchase of Current will coincide with Al-Jazeera launching a US-based channel, heralding a push for vastly broader visibility in American homes, on the back of strong US use of its existing English service on the Internet.

Offshore drilling contractor Transocean Ltd has agreed to pay $1.4 billion to settle U.S. government charges arising from BP Plc's massive Macondo oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.

The settlement unveiled on Thursday by the Department of Justice includes $1 billion in civil penalties and $400 million in criminal penalties. The company had set aside $1.95 billion in potential losses related to Macondo, including $1.5 billion for its anticipated settlement with the DoJ.

Shares of Transocean were up 7 percent at $49.50 in afternoon trading on the New York Stock Exchange, while the overall market was largely unchanged.

"The bottom line to me is they now can put away the big black cloud that has been hanging over them," said Phil Weiss, an oil analyst at Argus. "I take this as a positive, even if the number is a little higher than I expected."

Transocean, owner of the Deepwater Horizon rig at the centre of BP's Gulf of Mexico blowout, has reached a $1.4bn settlement with the Department of Justice to settle criminal and civil charges.

The Swiss-based rig operator has been in the dock since April 2010 saw the worst spill in American history. The $1bn in civil penalties and $400m in criminal ones is in line with what the company was expecting.

A formal statement had not been released on Thursday night but sources in the US confirmed the two sides had reached a deal far lower than the $4.5bn agreed by BP, which only covered criminal claims.

North-western North Dakota is home to the Bakken shale formation, where fracking has led to an oil boom. Most of the bright lights are natural gas from wells being burned because the region lacks the infrastructure to pipe all the gas away. Gas production has increased rapidly in recent years but 30% is flared. Image: NASA Earth Observatory image by Jesse Allen and Robert Simmon

The British public should be persuaded of the benefits of genetically modified food, the environment secretary will tell the UK's farming industry on Thursday, in a key signal of the government's intent to expand agricultural biotechnology and make the case for GM food in Europe.

Owen Paterson, the Conservative secretary of state for the environment and who has chosen to highlight GM technology in his first major speech to farmers, will tell the Oxford Farming Conference: "We should not be afraid of making the case to the public about the potential benefits of GM beyond the food chain - for example, reducing the use of pesticides and inputs such as diesel. I believe that GM offers great opportunities but I also recognise that we owe a duty to the public to reassure them that it is a safe and beneficial innovation."

for example, reducing the use of pesticides and inputs such as diesel. I believe that GM offers great opportunities but I also recognise that we owe a duty to the public to reassure them that it is a safe and beneficial innovation."

they could start by quitting the 'less pesticides' argument, when it has been proven as big a lie as 'cheap' nukular energy was/is.

10 to 1 it's the same gang of sociopaths pushing thm both...

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty

They repeat the lie cos it works. After all, they don't have to convince people who are scientifically literate, they have to convince the tiny percentage of easily impressed arty farty dimwits who discuss science in the press and on TV

AC Milan star Kevin-Prince Boateng and his teammates have marched off the pitch at an exhibition match in protest after fans apparently made racist chants. Boateng picked up the ball mid-game and booted it at the fans.

AC Milan's friendly with fourth-tier team Pro Patria on Thursday was interrupted after 26 minutes of play, and it was not re-started.

Kevin-Prince Boateng was attacking the Pro Patria penalty area when he suddenly stopped, picked up the ball with his hands and smashed it towards a section of the stands behind him.

The referee and players from both sides intervened to calm Boateng down, but he later walked away, took off his shirt and left the field. His teammates then followed.

...News agency AFP cited town mayor Gigi Farioli as saying Boateng's reaction was "inappropriate" and that he should have been sent off for "kicking a ball at 200 kilometers an hour towards a fan." Boateng's kick, from comparatively close range, missed the fan block by some distance, striking the structure of the stadium below where they were stood.
Farioli is a member of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's People of Freedom Party. Berlusconi owns AC Milan football club.

AFP - Researchers have disproved a long-held theory about how some bacteria survive antibiotics and opened the door to new treatments to fight drug-resistant bugs, a study released Thursday said.

Using a technique called microfluidics, scientists revealed that -- contrary to the explanation that has held for more than 50 years -- the surviving bacteria continue to divide and grow and, at times, die.

The old theory held that the survivors were the individual bacteria that had stopped growing and dividing.

"The persistent population is thus very dynamic, and the cells that constitute it are constantly changing -- even though the total number of cells remains the same," explained microbiologist Neeraj Dhar.

This is a crucial piece of information, the authors stress, and could help scientists develop new therapies for tough bacterial strains, like multi-drug resistant tuberculosis.

(Reuters) - The Western world's first drug to fix faulty genes promises to transform the lives of patients with an ultra-rare disease that clogs their blood with fat. The only snag is the price.

The gene therapy for lipoprotein lipase deficiency (LPLD), a hereditary disorder that raises the risk of potentially lethal inflammation of the pancreas, is likely to cost more than $1 million (618.65 thousand pounds) per patient when it goes on sale in Europe this summer.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has granted French actor Gerard Depardieu citizenship. The actor recently fled his home country in protest against a plan to reduce the national deficit by milking the highest earners.

Putin signed the decree on Thursday, according to the Kremlin's official website. There was no immediate comment from the famed French actor.

A couple of weeks ago, the Russian leader had already hinted at the possible nationality-switch.